


Here Comes The Sun

by PinkLetterDay



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: But Barry is also a sunshine puppy that only wants to love Oliver, Hurt/Comfort, Let Barry love you fool, M/M, Not that Barry isn't, Oliver is a really damaged person yo, Past Violence, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 16:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13274958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkLetterDay/pseuds/PinkLetterDay
Summary: Oliver fears the cold. But distrusts the warmth more.





	Here Comes The Sun

  
  
Oliver is afraid of the cold.  
  
Of all the nightmares he has about Lian Yu, the cold is the worst. It was the damp, spiteful cold of an island caught in the biting edge between snow and sleet. His torn feet had been perpetually wet and aching, and his toes numb on the sharp-pebbled gray beaches. The caves had kept the worst of the wind chill out but they hadn't been able to always afford campfires while on the run from Fyers and later Ivo. It had been a choice between another blade through the stomach or letting the cold gnaw deep into bone until his skeleton ached through his numb body. The night upon nights when he had been terrified and so tired he wanted to weep but was shaking too hard to drift off into unconsciousness.

After a while he had begun to think, half in an exhausted delirium, that he would welcome a blade or a bullet, swift and deliberate, more than having to endure this unrelenting wet frigidity that his body tried desperately to accustom itself to.  
  
His body had adjusted of course. He knows he bears the cold far more easily than many of his associates do. And yet it refuses to become easier to _face_. Stepping off the airplane into Moscow's chill air, he had imagined the snap of the winter frost like a trap shutting upon him.  
  
It's not _about_ having adjusted. It's having known the shock of it, the relentlessness, the helpless hopelessness. The starvation, for the birds and fish would withdraw to warmer currents in the bitterest months and the animals burrow deep so there had been less meat to hunt easily. The buffeting of freezing salt stinging his eyes. His father and Sara and Shado had all died in the dark with the howling wind raking ice across his skin.  
  
No one knows this about him, or even suspects, he hopes, and that is by design. People in civilization are taught to flinch from pain and retreat from that which they fear; the lesson of Oliver's life has been that the first to flinch would be the first to die. You are not _allowed_ to retreat. Fear merely follows you, lies in wait and ambushes you when you do. You must stand, you must witness and _learn,_ and if it threatens, you must never cut your eyes away.

The more afraid he is of the cold and the dark, the more he exposes himself to it. He has a high tolerance for any but freezing temperatures but he always wears fewer clothes than he should, bares himself in the snow, trains in the hard, punishing chill, even designs a uniform that leaves his arms unprotected. The cold bites down, and he bites it in turn, taming it between his teeth, never allowed to ambush, never allowed the upper hand. He tells himself fiercely that he _wants_ the needles sinking into his skin, _wants_ the numbness and static in his fingertips; he pulls it into himself and bares his teeth in defiance.  
  
And then he meets The Flash.  
  
From the first time the younger man steps close enough to him to feel it, the aura of vibrating heat emanating from him pulls Oliver in. He aches to touch Barry's skin, to close his always-too-cold fingers over that warm flesh and bask in it like an animal in the sun.  
  
He finds excuses at first, in training, in standing a smidgeon too close, in allowing Barry's own tactile affection with careful nonchalance. The first time Barry embraces him, he experiences again the same shock he had when the Gambit plunged into the waves - except this time instead of the terror of freezing cold and darkness, it is the sudden warmth of a blazing fireside that leaves him gasping.  
  
So of course he retreats as far as possible. Heat is a stranger to him; only the cold is a faithful, predictable enemy.  
  
Oliver should have remembered that retreating from fear merely makes it follow you.  
  
Barry keeps following him, at first baffled and concerned, then playful as though deciding that this is some kind of dance. Oliver will find himself drawn far too close to the speedster's otherworldly, electric warmth, then remember himself and flinch several steps back; Barry will follow as close as he dares until Oliver feels that inexorable pull again.

It is maddening to hover so near the dancing flame that would devour him, and yet. And yet.  
  
Oliver wants so badly to not be afraid anymore.  
  
When he finally succumbs to its lure, it is with the same snarling defiance with which he faces the cold. He simply does not know how _not_ to fight even when it is something freely given. Barry seems to understand this instinctively; when Oliver falls upon him like a man pushed past reason, he merely accepts the raking teeth and tongue and blunt nails and opens his body to him like a gift. Their suits disappear in flash, finally baring all of Oliver to him, and sinks himself down utterly into his crushing, desperate embrace.  
  
It is heat and light and warmth as Oliver has never known it, a banquet for a starving man. He cries with relief as he buries himself between those warm thighs and falls into Barry's mouth like a drunk into his cups. The lightning skitters in the thin pink veins rising on the speedster's skin, tasting of storms and honey and heat. Here, safe in Barry's arms, the vibrating heat of universes between their bodies, Oliver finally lets the weight of his terror and grief collapse over him, weeping the horror out of himself in deep, wracking sobs, and allows himself to unravel.  
  
He wakes up to find Barry's tender gaze on his face, thumb softly stroking the drying tear tracks on his cheeks. He is still folded in the younger man's arms, their sweat and spend drying between them. Oliver has never felt so naked and exposed; he is almost crushed under the weight of his shame and weakness. He wants to flee. But he can't look away because Barry is heat and light and beauty and he wants _oh how he wants_ to burn inside it, again and again.   
  
His lover straddles his spread-eagled body and leans over him, pinning his wrists above his head. Barry's long fan of lashes almost brushes Oliver's own; their mouths are so close they can almost taste each other.  
  
"I know you want to run, Ollie," Barry whispers. "And I can't stop you. But I am going to follow. I'm always going to follow.  
  
"But...right now? Please just let us have this. Let me have you."  
  
A tear falls on Oliver's cheek before gentle lips touch his own...and he surrenders. His body goes lax underneath Barry as he melts against him, the lightning warmth sinking inside his bones, sending blood surging through him, feeling his heart crack in the thaw.  
  
It is as Oliver lets himself be encompassed by Barry's love and pulled under, that he remembers - cold is not a presence in itself, but an absence of warmth; a bitter stagnation waiting for light and motion.  
  
He doesn't have to wait anymore.


End file.
